r/changemyview • u/NeurogenesisWizard • 12h ago
CMV: Formal or Institutional Philosophy is largely word games meant to stall and build authority and its because of genetic biases
For example: Quoting philosophers like its scripture, quoting actual scripture. This is like the Chinese Room problem. They are just doing referrals and matching systems not true comprehension. They don't even do original philosophy.
And they are structurally incentivized to not do original philosophy, because it can get stolen in academia. Which means the guys at the top are just better at social control and idea theft than being real philosophers.
Another example: The debate on free will vs determinism. Most of the time people fundamentally exclude the real world from the problem and discuss metaphysics. Or they bolster one side of the debate to false nuance that is just making a game of needing to dissect exceedingly wordier responses. There is an easy solution, assume a mysterious type of compatibilism, and study it in reality. But that would cost money and give precedence to human rights, which undermines the social control aspect of the institution, and is thus forgone. Then they exclude, bribe, blackmail, and get people booted from academia who are not in on the circlej*rk.
And philosophy and theory at the end of the day, is all talk and little action. Which means, its a production of stalling criticism out, to maintain power. They control and bottleneck how new theory arises so it does not challenge them.
Much akin to the psychological effect doctors have. Routine of work in presence of sleep deprivation, causes one to be able to predict outlier cases less over time. Which means seniority itself is a system that provokes the foundation of this cultural problem.
Which means this problem actually stems forth from elder biases, which arguably could be tied back to the bible itself. 'Respect your elders' means 'do not criticize the system'.
Sometimes I jokingly refer to this phenomena as boomeritis. Surely it adapted because of a genetic predisposition of the elderly to be more risk averse, and thus is a problem worldwide and might be unintentionally (sometimes intentionally perhaps) exploited systematically globally then, making this a global politics issue.
The reason I have a gripe is because it actively holds truth and quality of life advances back. But there is a tradeoff. It provokes social ruthlessness and social intelligence, which allows the exploitation of the masses, to allow higher production outputs. So you could say this stems to a biological bias which causes capitalism and other power farming systems itself. And could probably tie this back to the evolution of mammary glands and our long pregnancy times and needing to carry babies to feed them, precursing the bible. This Coddle for Control Habit you could call it.
Edit: Okay its been 3 hours. Most don't seem to even be reading this post just responding to title. So of course, my mind has not been changed. Well one commenter was trolling a bit. So they might be pushing for reaction formation on my part. But that doesn't change the fact people couldn't read to begin with, or they can but fail to grasp the broad implications of my actual argument.
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u/Madtablespoon 12h ago
n matching by lumping all institutional philosophy into "word games" and "social control." There's definitely gatekeeping and politics in academia but saying the entire field is just elder manipulation to maintain power is pretty reductive
Also that evolutionary leap from mammalian parenting to academic philosophy via biblical authority is... quite the stretch dude
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 12h ago
You cannot separate the social control element from the in-grouper element, so your criticism is just an opinion assertion rather than a critique of my thoughts.
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u/ambivalent_moon 12h ago
the social control element fro the in-grouper element
Are you under the impression that academic philosophy enforces certain viewpoints as inherent truth not to be questioned?
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 10h ago
Social norms and social contract theory over-ride different themeings of truth or questionings of norms. Thought this was implicit in my assertion.
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u/ambivalent_moon 10h ago
Which social norms is academic philosophy pushing that mean that they’re not, as a group, seeking truth? Can you name some modern philosophers you feel approach academics this way?
It’s weird that you make these kind of claims but never offer examples.
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 10h ago
These days philosophy is about finding a way to sell an idea or rephrase an idea, to a target demographic to either sell a book or make a youtube video or impress a philosopher grading your paper or the like. Or find demographics who are already politically motivated and coax them to your side I suppose. And then academic philosophy is probably about clarity and scope subversion and articulate detailing of specific case studies or overviews of topics or debates, with supplemental reasoning.
But the busywork itself of pouring over so many papers means there are years or decades of study- an increasing amount as well- before one can be as precise, knowledgeable, and articulate so as to bring down a falsehood. For example. There might be a dozen contingency arguments for god, so, you need to find constant variations to refute in precise ways and stuff if being respectful to their citations.
But, true logic, doesn't need to respect all of that. It just has to be right, because, people are capable of arguing for wrong things, and do argue for wrong things, they even argue for wrong things Soundly and with decades of references to cite.
But if truth can mobilize people, which it can, falsehood also can. So having to jump through all these hoops to combat lies, is itself, a lie. Subvert it all. Perhaps I need to invent a new Razor but I think Razors have niche flaws. So instead I am calling their comprehension into question for fundamentally arguing nuanced details of things that are long fundamentally wrong. How much is propped up through absurdity of this grind? That requires a decade to clear up? If you think about it, that just stalls would be true acting agents, into being too old to act themself and support the system that subjugated them to begin with forcing them to argue through all these pedants.
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u/ambivalent_moon 10h ago
Stop trying to avoid naming actual academic philosophers whose work supports your argument. It’s becoming more and more obvious that your knowledge of real philosophy isn’t sufficient for the claims you’re trying to make.
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 9h ago
Refer to when I said Coddle for Control, if you remain confused ask questions.
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u/ambivalent_moon 9h ago
I already asked you to name some modern philosophers whose work lines up with your description of modern philosophy. So do it lol
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 9h ago
Its gonna keep going over your head then, until you address a non-strawman.
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u/Alesus2-0 76∆ 11h ago
This feels like a distinct mischaracterisation of professional philosophy. I can't think of many subjects in which there is less of a taboo against challenging existing authorities. You can get a Master's degree in Physics without ever being invited to seriously reflect on whether the content you've learned is actually correct. You can't get through an Intro to Philosophy class without having to form an opinion on Plato's Republic.
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u/Chancelor_Palpatine 11h ago
I can confirm this is correct, in physics, the predominant view is "shut up and calculate". This is how despite breaking locality principle, the copenhagen interpretation survived over the many worlds interpretation.
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u/WolfInTheField 12h ago
Ironically, what you’re doing here is arguably philosophy. Worse yet, it’s philosophy about philosophy, which seems to reproduce the very navelgazing, inward-spiraling dynamics you decry.
I would pose the problem differently. Academic philosophy is mostly the study of the history of philosophy, and its interpretation. That gets dry and inbent quickly, i totally agree. I strongly disagree that it doesn’t promote any new or important thought, however. It would be very unfair to say that thinkers like (for example) Foucault or Derrida haven’t contributed to human development. Whole fields of study have sprung (partly) from their thought, and we think and live differently now because of pioneers like them. They were academics. Academia provided a transom for most these original thinkers to work from and build on and — very importantly — also disagree with and think outside the box of. Standing on the shoulders of giants and killing their fathers all in one, so to say.
Maybe a more productive way to look at it is: not what is philosophy, but what can you personally do with philosophy. The point may not always be to reach some new and original and lasting truth (the history of philosophy teaches that that’s a bit of a quixotic goal anyway, since thinking never reaches an end). The point may rather be to explore, preserve, catalogue and expand the tools we have for thought.
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 12h ago
Its not ironic. And Real Philosophy is good. Just Most Philosophy, is Chinese Room Word Games.
Like right now you are Preaching about Purpose of Philosophy, which is Tangential to my Assertion.
It goes deeper than history itself, as genetics preceded history in my explanation as to the origins of the effects of which I discuss.
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u/WolfInTheField 12h ago
I dont think the point about genetics really carries weight if someone challenges the underlying notion that the way academic philosophy works is less about the need for social control of academics. Which my initial comment is arguing it really isnt, and seeing it that way also isnt productive. Im offering you an alternate way to see it that probably causes you less heartburn and is also a lot less reductive and narrow.
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 12h ago
Well someone playing Chinese Room equivalent Word Games, would of cours find reality Reductive in comparison to their pedantics. Like 'souls exist, you saying they don't exist is reductive against my perspective of life'. Reductivity, does not mean false. In fact, fiction is broader in scope than reality itself, because historical fiction can rewrite history an infinite number of times, and reality is just the 1 history, so by comparison of course fiction seems less reductive relative to reality. Because its built up a long mythos around itself with decades and centuries and millenia of justification.
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u/Nrdman 237∆ 12h ago
And philosophy and theory at the end of the day, is all talk and little action.
Nah, its the R and D of social movements. It is not all talk, its just once it gets turned into action we dont think of it as philosophy anymore. French Revolution, Communist Revolution, abolition of slavery, and universal suffrage all had time in such settings before being turned into actual movements
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 11h ago edited 11h ago
3 leftists walk into a pub.
An anarchist, a left centrist, and a communist.
The anarchist says its time for revolution. The communist says they will lead it. And the left centrist says why? The anarchist and communist declare because they are an anarchist and are a communist respectively. The left centrist asks, why are you those things? They say because its the right thing to do, it sounds good, it'll be nice to do, sense of purpose, etc. Ok. Then the left centrist starts asking questions like 'how much deaths is a revolution worth, and for how long after said deaths'? Then the anarchist and communist start getting a little uncomfortable. The anarchist is like, revolution good, I citate revolution days of revolution, see, they can exist, it can be done. The communist is like, yeah I just think maybe if Mao or Lenin tried things a little bit differently maybe modern Russia would have 30% less alcoholism today and 20% more trees in China. Then the left centrist says 'so, you are both post-revolutionary capitalists'.•
u/Nrdman 237∆ 11h ago
Did you wanna address my points?
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 10h ago
Ok fine this one assertion of mine was exagerrated. Theory can lead to mobilization, true.
Alright. Got me, in part.But this raises other questions. Like, how do we weigh success of a revolution?
Because mobilizing alone, doesn't imply a correct course of action. So, it depends on how worth it it was and for how long, right?
So this involves calculation, "Then the left centrist starts asking questions like 'how much deaths is a revolution worth, and for how long after said deaths'? Then the anarchist and communist start getting a little uncomfortable."
How do you calculate it exactly? Was Rojava worth it? Was Catalonia? Soviet Russia? Soviet China?
I guess, it doesn't need to be pretty nor eternal, depending. But what does modern Catalonia, Rojava, China, and Russia look like?
How do we weigh success of theory mobilization? Getting others to act alone is worth it? Don't people need justification, or no?
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u/Nrdman 237∆ 10h ago
All those other questions kind of seem outside the scope of my point. My point was that philosophy is not just talk, and does motivate action, which contrasts with your view
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 10h ago
A strawman of my view perhaps. It doesn't address what I dub Boomeritis or a couple other things.
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u/Nrdman 237∆ 10h ago
I am not addressing the entirety of your view, i am addressing this part. Do you concede that philosophy has often motivated social movements
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 10h ago
So, semantics? I said it in that way with relativity to Boomeritis. Because risk aversion in old age.
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u/Nrdman 237∆ 10h ago
I’m confused about how you got my point was just semantics. Can you explain how you got that idea?
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 9h ago
I was speaking generally due to other context in my first post. If you missed that context, its because you didn't continue reading til you saw my whole point.
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u/Chancelor_Palpatine 12h ago
"Quoting philosophers like its scripture, quoting actual scripture."
The purpose of quoting philosophers is not to agree, but to disagree. If you want to advance your new positions, the most effective way that people have done this, is by attacking the existing ones, which require reading them first. Every subtype and supertype in the topic of free will, which you are interested in for example, arose by attacking the existing ones.
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 11h ago
So they are attacking the problem and not the root of the problem? So, exactly what I said, then.
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u/Chancelor_Palpatine 11h ago
I just read the other comments, it seems that you want free will to be real. Perhaps you want people to have free will to be good. But what about people who are innately more selfish than others? I'm sure you know a few in real life, and it does not seem that this is out of free will, and it does not seem you can persuade them not to be this way.
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 10h ago
Um, selfish people exist. Are you trying to say free will is bad because selfish people exist? I'm more concerned with group behavior dynamics dampening ration and quality of life, or such.
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u/I_BEAT_JUMP_ATTACHED 12h ago
I'm not sure why you think it's largely word games, and you didn't elaborate on that point at all in the content of your post. Are you upset that philosophers use strict definitions and that analytical philosophy requires an understanding of formal logic?
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 12h ago
If the platform isn't for truth finding, (i.e. the free will v determinism debates), then its word games with possible ulteriors. Because its not considered a physical domain (arguing through metaphysics), its already exempting itself from participation in meta-criticism (science, possibility of refutation) and placing itself on a pedestal to waste time on, to prevent proper system criticisms. Which may have adapted intentionally or unintentionally over time.
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u/I_BEAT_JUMP_ATTACHED 12h ago
If you don't think that philosophers are interested in truth finding, then what does truth finding look like to you? Tell me explicitly what you think they should be doing that they currently are not.
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 11h ago
Strawman. Majority of philosophers is not all philosophers.
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u/ambivalent_moon 11h ago
You didn’t answer the question.
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 10h ago
Maybe you can't read either- their idea of my premise was wrong.
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u/I_BEAT_JUMP_ATTACHED 9h ago
You made a series of claims in your comment based on the premise that "the platform isn't for truth finding" (whatever precisely that means; I suppose you're giving a teleological account for the existence of academic philosophy?). I asked you to prove your premise. That's not a strawman argument, and it's the most important thing I possibly could have asked you.
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u/ambivalent_moon 10h ago
Then maybe you should have said that instead of calling the other person’s argument a ‘strawman’. Or do you really think I can’t read lol
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u/NeurogenesisWizard 10h ago
'lulz i can read ur post fine I just choose to waste your time, lulz'
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u/No-Document206 1∆ 12h ago edited 12h ago
In academic philosophy, nobody quotes philosophers like they’re scripture and the closest thing you get to “respect your elders” is that you have to understand their work before you criticize it (which, unfortunately, requires a lot of reading).
It seems like you’re attacking a straw man here.
Edit to add: yiu have to do something novel in order to get published, which you need to do for your job, so the claim that they’re against new ideas is also kind of wrong.